In the absence of real political debate, even though we are on the eve of a general election, rather than either side having a strategy and keeping to it, they seem more inclined to follow anything the cat brings in and derive any spin from that.

Take cost over-runs, for instance. There should be general agreement that cost over-runs should be the exception that proves the rule, rather than the other way round. Instead, cost over-runs seem as ingrained in the Maltese character as pastizzi.

The Labour Opposition has been rightly campaigning for a long time against cost over-runs when lo and behold Minister Austin Gatt decides to pull up the Water Services top brass for their cost over-runs in the waste water plants. In truth, there have been no less than four completion dates mentioned in Parliament and three cost estimates for the plants.

The minister’s insistence on keeping to plans would have been kept hidden inside the government machine had not WSC chief Michael Falzon felt irked by the minister’s tone and decided to resign, making public his own disagreement with his minister.

Did Labour praise the minister for his insistence on no cost over-runs? Not at all. On the contrary, when Mr Falzon subsequently withdrew his resignation, we had Labour spokesmen saying this was an Austin Gatt U-turn when in fact it was Mr Falzon’s U-turn. We now know, through It-Torca, that Prime Minister Gonzi intervened.

Labour subsequently asked for an Auditor General inquiry into the whole issue, even when the Auditor General is well past the end of his second term, as he told the Public Accounts Committee and when they well knew that with government members in a majority in the PAC, there was no way such a motion could be carried.

In truth, it must also be said, to force through a PAC investigation into the whole issue, as the PAC majority insisted upon, seems very much like the government becoming its own judge and jury – certainly in breach of the PAC spirit if not the letter.

There, but for the latest “developments” such as the revelations on Mr Falzon’s links to the Polidano Group, and similar tangential developments, the story ends. Where does it leave us?

The original issue – cost over-runs – has been clouded over by later developments, but it is still very important. This country is still plagued by an epidemic of cost over-runs – from the building of the new airport, to the construction of Mater Dei, to the Manwel Dimech Bridge, to waste treatment plants, and so on. All this shows one thing: shoddy preparatory work. To have one, or a few, cost over-runs, is pardonable. To have them as regular and consistent as they have been gives a very bad perception that government, nay, public money is elastic and can be stretched eternally.

At the same time, Labour must be consistent. They are right to campaign against cost over-runs and to criticise such over-runs wherever they may happen, but then they must accept being shown reasons for such eventual cost over-runs, rather than impose a blanket negative appreciation, or, worse, a systematic suspicion that where there are cost over-runs, corruption lurk. And when a minister bravely acts against cost over-runs, if they cannot bring themselves to praise, at least they should keep silent.